Industry leaders Jim Kerrigan and David Horowitz join Avison Young in Chicago

Data center and mission critical facilities experts join as Principals

CHICAGO, IL, Feb. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ - Michael McKiernan, Avison Young Principal and Managing Director of the company's Chicago office, announced today that data center experts Jim Kerrigan and David Horowitz have joined Avison Young's brokerage operations in Chicago.

Effective immediately, Kerrigan and Horowitz join Avison Young as Principals and will lead the company's data center specialty efforts. They will continue to focus on assisting clients in Canada and the U.S. with their data center space needs.

"The addition of Jim and David to the Avison Young team shows our firm's continued commitment to client service through superior expertise," comments McKiernan. "Clients today are looking for answers to their business issues - risk management of intellectual property being a prime example. Jim and David's expertise in mission critical facilities allows Avison Young's clients to tap into some of the best experience in America on protecting intellectual capital. For our clients, downtime could be the difference between solvency and bankruptcy."

He adds: "More than 50% of companies run out of space due to power and cooling constrictions that could easily be avoided with the proper real estate strategy. Jim and David understand that the approach to data center planning has little to do with square footage and everything to do with the proper planning for racks and kilowatts."

Kerrigan is a 21-year commercial real estate industry veteran while Horowitz has eight years of data center real estate experience. Both join Avison Young after spending eight years together at The Staubach Company, and most recently at Grubb & Ellis where they led the formation of the Data Center Group.

Past and current clients include: Citigroup Server Central, Dupont Fabros, Equinix, Fidelity Information Systems, United Airlines, Servint, Digital Capital Partners, CyrusOne, National Real Estate Advisors (NEBF), and Teletech.

For more than two decades, Kerrigan has focused on representing technology-oriented companies. He has assisted developers, financial institutions, hosting, colocation and telecommunication companies in meeting their data center space needs since 1998. During the last several years, he has completed more than 3 million square feet (msf) worth of data center transactions and worked on more than $150 million in private equity transactions and $75 million in investor banking transactions.

Kerrigan holds a Bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Illinois. He is a member of the Chicago Office Leasing Brokers Association (COLBA), and has served as a board member of 7x24 Exchange (Lake Michigan Region) and Beacon Therapeutic School, a not-for-profit corporation that promotes the welfare of children with severe emotional problems.

"I am pleased to be joining a forward-thinking company such as Avison Young, and to be delivering this service option during the company's unprecedented period of expansion," comments Kerrigan.

He continues: "The consolidation of our competitors into publicly-traded entities has eliminated options for clients seeking knowledge and advice from privately-held real estate consultancies. This situation is exacerbated by a lack of highly-trained and skilled experts who don't respond to groupthink or the need to respond to publicly-traded deadlines. A number of Canadian-based companies are looking for logical data center solutions but have not found the necessary guidance to solve their problems. We understand client concerns across Canada and the U.S. and can help create individualized solutions."

Horowitz has successfully completed more than 100 megawatts of data center transactions during the last eight years, representing some of the largest technology companies in the world. His specialties include: site-selection for colocation and wholesale data centers, lease/license negotiations, acquisitions and dispositions, power and fiber analysis, strategic planning, financial analysis, and real estate tax analysis.

Horowitz holds a business communications degree from the University of Kansas and is also a member of the Healthy Schools Campaign finance committee and a founding member of the Illinois Holocaust Museum.

"To become a Principal in such a dynamic, growing company as Avison Young represents a significant opportunity for me at this point in my career," notes Horowitz. "I look forward to continuing to work with Jim Kerrigan as we leverage the firm's Canadian platform and utilize the experience of Earl Webb, Avison Young's President, U.S. Operations, to help our clients with their strategic data center investments across North America."

Founded in 1978, Avison Young is Canada's largest independently-owned commercial real estate services company. Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Avison Young is also the largest Canadian-owned, principal-managed commercial real estate brokerage firm in North America. Comprising more than 800 real estate professionals in 26 offices across Canada and the U.S., the full-service commercial real estate company provides value-added, client-centric investment sales, leasing, advisory, management, financing and mortgage placement services to owners and occupiers of office, retail, industrial and multi-residential properties.

• Editors/Reporters: please click on links to view and download photos of Jim Kerrigan and David Horowitz

http://www.avisonyoung.com/sites/default/files/content-files/Media_Room/Temp/Jim_Kerrigan.JPG
http://www.avisonyoung.com/sites/default/files/content-files/Media_Room/Temp/David_Horowitz.JPG

SOURCE Avison Young (Canada) Inc.